Disc drives are typically used in a stand-alone fashion, such as in a personal computer (PC) configuration where a single disc drive is utilized as the primary data storage peripheral. However, in applications requiring vast amounts of data storage capacity, data reliability or high input/output (I/O) bandwidth, a plurality of drives can be arranged into a multi-drive array, sometimes referred to as RAID (“Redundant Array of Inexpensive (or Independent) Discs”).
One impetus behind the development of such multi-drive arrays is the disparity between central processing unit (CPU) speeds and disc drive I/O speeds. An array of smaller, inexpensive drives functioning as a single storage device will usually provide improved operational performance over a single, expensive drive.